I bet most of you wouldn’t know it. For most of you read Indian Express, Times of India and Hindustan Times. And none of them carried the news that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chose to abstain from voting on Rajya Sabha deputy chair on Thursday because Rahul Gandhi didn’t made a CALL to Arvind Kejriwal.
Indian Express, as usual, was the master of obfuscation. Buried deep down in their long story was one line:“AAP did a volte-face Thursday declaring it would support the Congress if Rahul Gandhi requested Arvind Kejriwal.” Indian Express never tells it readers that Rahul Gandhi never called!!! Instead, the newspaper terms it as “volte-face” on the part of AAP. Bravo.
First, the facts. AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, to all and sundry, spoke words which must have been acid to the ears of our Lutyens Media. Why did Sanjay Singh say? He said to the media an evening before on Wednesday that if Congress needed AAP’s support, its’ president Rahul Gandhi himself should make a call to Kejriwal.
But Rahul didn’t. And Sanjay wasn’t holding back his venom a day later on Thursday: “Congress is the biggest hurdle to Opposition unity. How will he (Rahul Gandhi) ensure the victory of his candidate if he cannot ask for votes?” It hurt AAP all the more that JDU chief and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar didn’t think it below his dignity to personally call up Kejriwal and seek support for NDA candidate,Harivansh Narayan Singh. “If Nitish could ask for support for his candidate, why not Rahul,” Singh said “When he (Rahul) can hug PM Modi, why can’t he ask Arvind Kejriwal to support his party’s candidate?” None of these damaging words, I can assure, you would find in these mentioned three English dailies.
Explosive, isn’t it? The news betrays a horde of staggering facts: (a) Opposition unity is going nowhere and Congress could be its biggest stumbling block; (b) Rahul Gandhi is arrogant; (c) BJP could’ve a cake-walk, come 2019 General Elections. And we are not even talking of the cascading effect it could’ve had on the forthcoming elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh in the remaining four months of 2018.
And yet it isn’t important to Lutyens Media? It writes reams and reams of columns on how BSP-SP combine would turn the tables on BJP; splashes pictures of opposition leaders holding aloft hands in Karnataka; berates HD Kumaraswamy on art of managing ally such as Congress; tears its lungs out on how Nitish and Modi are drifting apart; yet it finds Congress-AAP fall out no big deal. Strange, isn’t it? I mean Modi’s arrogance to allies is causing splits such as with TDP; but Rahul Gandhi’s nonchalance to Arvind Kejriwal is no arrogance and still good news for “mahagathbandhan”. See how dumb these newspapers think we are?
To be sure, these hacks of Lutyens Media know how to cover their tracks. So you search hard on internet, and you would find link to these stories, howsoever vague they are in description. Times of India, Hindustan Times and Indian Express do have taken note on internet. But it’s only a technical and legal defence; they have blanked it on their newsprint where their real audience is. I would be happy and ready to apologize if readers or these newspapers itself could point to any such coverage of Sanjay Singh’s reactions in their Delhi/Noida editions. I, for myself, found no such news in their newspapers.
There is a still bigger question which must trouble the sensibility of all readers. It couldn’t be the news never reached the teleprinter rooms of these newspapers. I mean the news was covered by Press Trust of India (PTI). Logically, any news desk would dread missing out on such an important story. I mean ask any journalist, he is taken to cleaners by his editor or served a show-cause notice for such a miss. But here not one, all three newspapers collectively spiked the story. It could be a coincidence; or someone takes decisions on behalf of these newspapers—your guess is as good as mine.
The pretence of “mahagathbandhan” must persist. The act of fooling paying-readers must go on. Meanwhile, you can count on Press Council of India (PCI) and Editors’ Guild to look the other way. And these guys want to “Save the Democracy” in India even while striking with hammers and axes at its fourth pillar, called Media.
